Accessibility Links

Leading architect Richard Meier quits firm he founded after sex abuse claims

Ben Hoyle, Los Angeles

March 15 2018, 12:01am, The Times

Allegations from women who have worked with the 83-year-old cover three decadesTHOS ROBINSON/GETTY IMAGES

One of the world’s leading architects has stepped down from the company that he founded after a number of women accused him of sexual harassment going back decades.

Richard Meier’s projects range from the enormous Getty Centre art museum in the hills above Los Angeles to a recent award-winning, glass-and-steel house for the comedian Rowan Atkinson in the Oxfordshire countryside, his first building in Britain.

The complaints against him detail incidents that took place as recently as 2009 and as long ago as the 1980s, when he became the youngest recipient on record of the prestigious Pritzker prize. They include claims that Mr Meier, now 83, tried to force himself on one woman, exposed himself to two others and fondled a woman’s underwear at a…